Interactive Maps – The Lowdownhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown
KQED Public Media for Northern CAMon, 19 Mar 2018 18:10:06 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.290570334Inside America’s Devastating Opioid Epidemic: How It Started and Where It’s Hitting Hardesthttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2018/01/31/mapping-americas-opioid-epidemic/
https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2018/01/31/mapping-americas-opioid-epidemic/#commentsThu, 01 Feb 2018 07:27:30 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=29793Continue reading Inside America’s Devastating Opioid Epidemic: How It Started and Where It’s Hitting Hardest→]]>The United States is dealing with the deadliest drug epidemic it has ever experienced.

Nearly 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, far exceeding the number of deaths from car crashes or guns, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of overdose deaths was 21 percent higher than in 2015, making it the leading cause of death for Americans under 50.

And while certain regions have been hit particularly hard, the epidemic has touched nearly every corner of the country, wreaking havoc among rich and poor communities alike in rural, suburban and urban areas.

Among the more than 64,000 estimated drug overdose deaths in 2016, the sharpest increase occurred among deaths related to fentanyl and synthetic opioids, with over 20,000 overdose deaths. Source: CDC WONDER (National Institute on Drug Abuse)

What are opioids?

Opioids include any drugs that work on opioid receptors, the proteins in our brains and spinal cords that control our reactions to pain and pleasure.

The term“opioids” refers to the very broad class of highly addictive drugs — both legal and illegal — that impact the body’s opioid receptors by blocking pain and sparking pleasurable sensations.

Morphine, methadone, hydrocodone (Vicodin), and oxycodone (OxyContin) are all popularly prescribed opioids, often used to treat chronic pain. Heroin, which is derived from morphine, has long been one of the most dangerous and commonly used illegal opioids. Fentanyl, a synthetic (man-made) opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, can be medically prescribed to treat severe pain, but it is now being illegally produced and sold on the street at an alarming rate.

There is a wide spectrum of opioid users — many who take prescription drugs responsibly, with the consent of a doctor, to manage pain. However, anestimated 12 million people currently abuse prescription opioids, which means they take them without a prescription or in larger amounts and for longer than prescribed.

How did this become an epidemic?

The U.S. health care industry underwent a gradual shift in the 1980s and 1990s — due in part to a number of influential articles in medical journals — in the way health care providers approached pain management. Opioids had long been recognized as highly addictive, and were largely used primarily to treat intense pain from cancer and other severe illnesses. But based on a growing consensus that chronic pain was not being treated effectively, health care providers were increasingly expected to more routinely assess their patients’ pain levels.

This change in approach happened alongside moreaggressive marketing tactics by big drug companies in an effort to sell opioid medications for non-cancer-related pain. This fueled a dramatic increase in the number of opioid prescriptions that doctors were giving to their patients. A class of drugs that was almost exclusively reserved for cancer patients was now being prescribed to a much wider group of patients experiencing various forms of chronic pain. In 2010, at the peak of this trend, there were more opioid prescriptions than residents in somecounties, particularly in rural areas in the Rust Belt, the South and the Pacific Northwest.

As prescription pills flooded into communities throughout the country, many people got hooked through a steady supply from friends, family members and drug dealers.

Since then, opioid prescription rates have declined, due in part to changes in policy and medical standards. But the overdose death rate has not followed suit. The once abundant supply of prescription opioids has been largely replaced by an influx of rampant abuse of heroin and illegally produced fentanyl, drugs that cost less, produce more intense highs and are much easier to get on the street.

Who is most affected by the crisis?

Opioid addiction is no longer limited to rural areas —new research shows many suburbs and cities are now facing similar opioid abuse rates.

Prescription opioidoverdose rates tend to be higher in older adults, while heroin overdose rates are higher in younger populations. And although more men currently die from drug overdoses, women are now dying from prescription opioids and heroin abuse at a rapidly increasing rate.

However, in contrast to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, which hit poor, black, urban communities the hardest, the opioid crisis disproportionately affectswhite Americans. And many point to thisracial divide as a key impetus for the dramatic shift in the way that lawmakers today are addressing the issue.

In the 1980s and 1990s, leaders from both parties waged a“war on drugs” — passing laws that criminalized illicit substances and imposed increasingly strict prison sentences on drug users and dealers. Compare that with the softer approach more commonly taken now , one that focuses on rehabilitation rather than criminalization, as evidenced by President Trump’s recentdeclaration of the opioid crisis as a “public health emergency.”

The two maps below compare estimated age-adjusted drug overdose death rates per county in 1999 and 2016, as provided by the CDC. In 1999, the nationwide drug overdose death rate was 6.1 per 100,000 population (just under 17,000 actual deaths). In 2016, it had risen to 19.8 per 100,000 (63,632 deaths), an almost 275 percent increase. Although the crisis reaches across the nation, areas of Appalachia and the Southwest and Northwest have been particularly hard hit.

In the second map, click on individual counties for localized data, including the estimated number of actual deaths. The data includes all drug-related overdose deaths (of which opioids were the cause of about two-thirds). To see county-specific data for 1999 deaths on the second map, deselect “2016 Overdose Deaths” in the lefthand layers window. In the second map, you can also search and zoom in to specific locations by clicking the magnifying glass button on the bottom left and entering a place name or Zip Code

What’s being done to try to slow the epidemic?

Ending the epidemic is a massive undertaking that by most accounts is just getting started. Opioids, both legal and illegal, remain widely available, and the epidemic continues to claim about 100 lives per day. There is a shortage of affordable drug treatment programs in every state, and the federal government has been slow to allocate money to the crisis.

Ending an opioid addiction is often physically painful and can be incredibly difficult to manage. Until recently, many people believed that effective withdrawal treatment required extended stays in residential treatment facilities, a costly approach that many patients and public health institutions simply can’t afford. It’s also one that commonly focuses on abstinence, a strategy that’s proved to not be consistently effective for long-term recovery

More recent evidence, however, has shown that opioid addiction can often be more successfully treated in non-residential primary care situations, especially with the use of closely monitored medication-assisted treatment options like methadone or buprenorphine — both forms of opioids themselves — a strategy that’s significantly cheaper and far less disruptive to patients’ lives.

Many health care workers view addiction as a medical condition, not a moral failing or criminal act, Yet possessing illegal opioids like heroin and fentanyl still comes with the risk of arrest and jail time. The epidemic won’t end, most experts agree, without also treating the underlying causes that lead people to opioids in the first place, including prevalent mental health issues.

Federal, state and local governments have taken some steps to treat current addicts as well as stanch the flow of opioids into communities.

Public health emergency: Last October, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a “public health emergency,” which gives states more flexibility to use federal funds to fight opioid addiction and boost prevention efforts. However, the latest federal budget calls for only a 1 percent increase in federal funding for all drug prevention efforts, and Trump has yet to appoint a “drug czar” to lead the fight against the epidemic.

New limits on opioid prescriptions: Opioid prescriptions have been declining since 2010. Some states, like New Jersey, have limited the number of opioids that doctors can prescribe. Other states, backed by the Justice Department, have threatened to jail doctors who overprescribe the drugs. The CDC recently released guidelines asking doctors not to prescribe opioids for chronic pain. Despite these efforts, prescription opioids are still widely available. In 2016, there were still enough opioid pills prescribed to fill a bottle for every adult in the U.S.

Cutting off the supply of illegal opioids: In January, Trump signed the INTERDICT Act, which further empowers border patrol and customs officers to detect and stop illegal shipments of fentanyl.

Increased access to anti-overdosing drugs: Walgreens announced last October that it would stock Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse a drug overdose. The spray will be available without an individual prescription in 45 states. CVS offers the spray in 43 states, also prescription-free. Narcan costs about $125 per dose. Its active ingredient is naloxone, which is also available in auto-inject form. But as demand for naloxone has increased, so has its price. The auto-inject format called Evzio now costs thousands of dollars, although price breaks have been negotiated by first responders and insurance companies.

Rachel Roberson contributed to this article.

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2018/01/31/mapping-americas-opioid-epidemic/feed/4029793opioid_overdosehandsoverdosedeaths1Among the more than 64,000 estimated drug overdose deaths in 2016, the sharpest increase occurred among deaths related to fentanyl and synthetic opioids, with over 20,000 overdose deaths. Source: CDC WONDERSoCal Wildfire Maps in Real Time: Where the Blazes Are Burning Nowhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/12/08/updated-southern-california-wildfire-maps/
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 20:49:43 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=29168
A series of large wildfires fanned by strong Santa Ana winds continued to ravage wide swaths of Southern California on Friday. The six active blazes burning in Ventura and San Diego counties have already destroyed hundreds of structures and forced more than 200,000 residents to evacuate.

Wildfires of this size are historically very rare in December. 2017 is now the deadliest, most destructive wildfire year on record in California. The blazes ignited less than two months after deadly Northern California fires wreaked havoc in Sonoma and Napa counties.

This is an automatically updated map of fire perimeters and reports from Cal Fire. Below that are closeups of the Thomas, Creek, Rye and Lilac fire perimeters and animated timelines of their spread this week.

]]>29168The Case for Loving: The Supreme Court Legalized Interracial Marriage Just 50 Years Agohttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/06/23/less-than-50-years-ago-the-supreme-court-put-an-end-to-race-based-marriage-bans/
Fri, 23 Jun 2017 19:00:39 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=2012Continue reading The Case for Loving: The Supreme Court Legalized Interracial Marriage Just 50 Years Ago→]]>Interracial marriage was banned in nearly a third of all states up until 50 years ago.

That changed overnight following the Supreme Court’s June 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a landmark case concerning an interracial married couple living in Virginia, one of the many mostly southern states that still enforced anti-miscegenation laws. (Virginia, it turns out, hasn’t always been for lovers.)

In its unanimous decision, the Court — led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former California governor — ruled that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The court ruled along similar lines in 2015, when it moved to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

The plaintiffs

In 1958, Virginia residents Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, crossed into Washington, D.C. to get legally married . Soon after returning to Virginia, police raided their home in the middle of the night, arresting the couple on felony charges for breaking the state’s anti-miscegenation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act.

The two pleaded guilty in state court in January 1959 and were sentenced to a year in prison unless they agreed to leave the state for 25 years. In explaining his verdict, trial judge Leon Bazile wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Loving’s moved to Washington, D.C., where their marriage was legally recognized. A bricklayer and homemaker, the couple had little intention of becoming activists, but wanted the option of returning to Virginia.

In 1964, as Congress debated passage of the Civil Rights Act, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy to see if the pending law could help them. She was referred to the American Civil Liberties Union, who filed suit in federal court against the state of Virginia. Three years later, after several appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court.

Anti-miscegenation laws

Nearly every state in the country has had an anti-miscegenation law on the book at some point in its history. By the end of World War II, roughly 40 states still had active statues, including California.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The California Supreme Court in 1948 overturned the state’s longstanding anti-miscegenation statute. Throughout the 1950s, numerous states followed California’s lead, and by the time of the Loving case, there were 16 holdouts, located almost entirely in the South.

The High Court’s Ruling

The Court unanimously overturned Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, rejecting the state’s defense that the statute applied to blacks and whites equally. The court ruled that drawing distinctions based on race were generally “odious to a free people” and should therefore be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court stated, had no legitimate purpose except blatant racial discrimination as “measures designed to maintain white supremacy.”

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.

The decision overturned all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Several states, however, maintained their anti-miscegenation statutes as a symbolic measures, though no longer legally enforceable.

In 2000, Alabama became the last state to officially remove its anti-miscegenation provision from the state constitution, the result of a ballot measure that only passed by a 60 percent margin (more than 525,000 Alabamans people voted to keep it in place).

In 2007, a year before her death, Mildred Loving reflected on the landmark decision that changed her life:

I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry… I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

]]>2012Repeal of Anti-Miscegenation Laws by StateSource: Wikimedia CommonsTrump Just Backed Out of the Paris Climate Deal. Here’s What the U.S. Is Walking Away Fromhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/06/02/trump-just-backed-the-u-s-out-of-the-paris-climate-accord-this-is-what-were-walking-away-from/
Sat, 03 Jun 2017 00:08:27 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=27194Continue reading Trump Just Backed Out of the Paris Climate Deal. Here’s What the U.S. Is Walking Away From→]]>

President Trump on Thursday announced plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, a landmark international agreement to reduce planet-warming emissions that nearly every country in the world signed on to.

“We’re getting out,” Trump said at a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden, a fulfillment of his long-held campaign promise to walk away from an agreement he’s assailed as a bad deal for American workers and industries and one that gives other countries an edge over the U.S.

“Our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of American workers’ sovereignty,” he added, noting the possibility of renegotiating the deal under terms more favorable to U.S. interests. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

For years before becoming president, Trump criticized the very concept of climate change, calling it everything from “nonexistent” and “mythical” to a “very expensive, hoax!”

The announcement ends months of speculation over the direction he would go in. Some of the most conservative members of his administration — namely top aide Steve Bannon and head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt — had advocated strongly for walking away from the deal. More recently, though, a number of influential advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (the former head of Exxon Mobil) — had lobbied for staying the course, in part to avoid likely diplomatic blowback. So too had a host of major corporations, including several energy industry giants.

News of the U.S. withdrawal sent shock waves around the country and the world, prompting scores of foreign leaders and U.S. city and state officials doubled down on their commitment to reducing carbon emissions. Per the terms of the agreement, the U.S. will likely withdraw over a 3-year period, which means it won’t officially exit until, coincidentally, a day after the next presidential election. It will then join Syria and Nicaragua as the only three countries not involved in the pact.

Curb the rise (“peak”) in global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) as soon as possible and by the second half of this century establish a balance between GHG sources and sinks (natural systems that suck up GHGs in the atmosphere and and store them).

Wealthy nations commit to spending $100 billion a year, by 2020, to finance climate initiatives in developing nations, with a commitment to continue financing in the future.

In December 2015, representatives of 195 nations agreed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by a set amount over a specified time period, with the overall goal of preventing global average surface temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures (when we started burning large amounts of fossil fuels). Anything beyond that would likely result in irreversible, catastrophic environmental consequences throughout the world, including rapid sea level rise and devastating floods and drought, according to a broad scientific consensus.

The United Nations conference on climate change, or COP21 (Conference of Parties), followed nearly 20 years of mostly failed efforts. The deal also includes pledges from the world’s wealthiest nations and largest emitters to raise billions each year to help poor countries build more sustainable economies.

Historical emissions

The Obama administration, which took a lead role in brokering the Paris accord, committed the U.S. to reducing emissions by at least 26 percent of 2005 levels over the next decade, and offering $3 billion in aid for poorer countries by 2020. Although it makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. is second only to China in greenhouse gas emissions, and historically, the largest contributor to climate change.

“In cumulative terms, we certainly own this problem more than anybody else does,” David G. Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, told The New York Times.

And that’s why Trump’s decision to renege on America’s commitment to reducing emissions has dealt such a harsh blow to a deal that many world leaders consider the last, best international opportunity to avoid the most destructive impacts of a changing climate change.

The visualization below was created by Duncan Clark and Robin Houston of the the design Kiln. It uses a distorted interactive map to show how much each nation has contributed to carbon emissions and how vulnerable each is to its impacts.

]]>27194historical_emissionsHistorical emissionsINTERACTIVE: What Is the Paris Climate Accord and Will Trump Keep the U.S. in It?https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/04/20/trump-and-the-paris-climate-deal-should-we-stay-or-should-we-go/
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 06:50:07 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=26657Continue reading INTERACTIVE: What Is the Paris Climate Accord and Will Trump Keep the U.S. in It?→]]>On the campaign trail last May, then-candidate Donald Trump declared: “We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement … and stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.”

As president, however, Trump now appears less determined to pull the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 international agreement that committed nearly every nation in the world to reduce planet-warming emissions. Contrary to his earlier statement, he doesn’t have the power to “cancel” the multilateral U.N. accord, but could substantially weaken it by withdrawing the U.S., which is the world’s largest economy and one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.)

As part of the deal, the U.S. promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent of 2005 levels within a decade.

Some of the most conservative members of his administration — namely Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, still advocate walking away from the deal. But Trump’s hesitation has grown recently as a number of his closest advisors, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (the former head of Exxon Mobil), have urged him to stay the course in order to avoid diplomatic blowback. A host of major corporations, including several oil giants, have also endorsed the pact. The administration is expected to make a final decision at the end of May.

But even if Trump chooses to remain in the accord, it’s highly unlikely his administration would adhere to the ambitious emission-reduction goals set by his predecessor; Trump has already made an aggressive push to peel back many of the energy regulations put in place by President Obama that would have helped achieve those goals.

In December 2015, representatives of 195 nations agreed to the landmark climate accord, which required each participating nation to significantly lower its greenhouse gas emissions as part of an urgent international effort to stave off the worst consequences of climate change.

The agreement was the culmination of two intense weeks of negotiations between delegates from every corner of the globe, who gathered in a huge tent-city compound on the outskirts of Paris to iron out the countless details involved in one of the most complex international deals ever attempted.

Curb the rise (“peak”) in global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) as soon as possible and by the second half of this century establish a balance between GHG sources and sinks (natural systems that suck up GHGs in the atmosphere and and store them).

Wealthy nations commit to spending $100 billion a year, by 2020, to finance climate initiatives in developing nations, with a commitment to continue financing in the future.

The United Nations conference on climate change, or COP21 (Conference of Parties), followed nearly 20 years of largely failed efforts to forge a meaningful international agreement to lower GHGs. Many world leaders, including President Obama, considered these negotiations the last, best chance to prevent global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels.

The goal: to stop global average surface temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures (when we started burning large amounts of fossil fuels). Temperatures rising above that 2 degree threshold would likely result in irreversible, catastrophic environmental consequences around the world, according to broad scientific consensus. That could include rapid sea level rise and devastating flooding and drought.

To keep global average temperatures a bay, each of the participating nations — which are collectively responsible for almost 98 percent of global emissions — have to dramatically reduce their own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane). But that’s a tricky proposition: Some countries have been emitting GHGs for decades, even centuries, and reaping huge economic benefits, while many other “developing nations” are just beginning that process.

The deal, therefore, not only requires rich countries to significantly cut their emissions, it also mandates that they pay poorer countries to also cut emissions and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.

“The new deal will not, on its own, solve global warming. At best, scientists who have analyzed it say, it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half what is necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the point at which scientific studies have concluded the world will be locked into a future of devastating consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages, and more destructive storms.”

The deal also came under fire by some environmental activist groups who argue it’s too weak to effectively prevent environmental disaster. They deal, they note is largely voluntary, lacking the necessary legally binding emissions reduction requirements.

Although the U.S. pledge to reduce emission by 26 percent of 2005 levels is more ambitious than some large carbon emitting nations like Russia, it pales in comparison to many other developed countries, including the 28 European Union nations, who have all committed to at least a 40 percent GHG reduction below 1990 levels by 2030.

Although signatories are legally required to meet every five years — beginning in 2020 — with updated emissions goals, the goals themselves are not legally binding.

Today — April 4 — is “Equal Pay Day.” It marks the number of days into 2017 (plus all of 2016) that an average American woman would need to work in order to make the same amount that an average man made in 2016.

Although the the gender wage gap has narrowed significantly in the last 50 years, it remains stubbornly high. Nationwide, women are still paid, on average, about 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the National Women’s Law Center’s analysis of American Community Survey wage data. That gap varies widely by region, and it grows significantly wider for women of color.

Women make up about half the U.S. workforce. They’re the main breadwinners in roughly 40 percent of households and have eclipsed men in the number of college and graduate degrees earned, according to NWLC.

Yet, on average, women earn less than men in almost every occupation for which there is sufficient wage data. The median wage for full-time male workers in 2014 was $50,383, as compared to $39,621 for women, based on NWLC’s analysis.

By state

Click on each state in the map below to see what a woman, on average, made for every dollar made by a man in 2014 (the ratio of female to male median earnings for full-time, year-round workers), and the difference that makes annual and over the course of a 40-year career. The map uses 2014 data from the American Community Survey, as collected and analyzed by the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group (download the data here).

Figures are based on women’s and men’s 2014 median earnings for full-time, year-round work over a 40-year career, and are not adjusted for inflation.

Leading the pack was Washington D.C., where female full-time workers made, on average, 89.5 cents for every dollar male workers made. In California, which ranked eighth, women made 84.1 cents for every dollar made by men. Louisiana took up the rear: women there made a mere 65.3 cents for every dollar made by men.

When the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, full-time working women made, on average, about 59 cents for every dollar made by men. By 1973, the gap had actually grown wider: women made 57 cents for every dollar men made. Since then, however, the gap has gradually narrowed, although it’s remained fairly stagnant since 2000.

Why does the wage gap persist?

Reasons vary widely. Some academic studies argue that the disparity is due mainly to non-discriminatory factors related to division of labor in the home — including childcare — that often falls more heavily on women. Because of family-related circumstances, like giving birth, women overall are also more likely than men to have interrupted careers and work part-time, which can result in less-senior positions and lower wages. Additionally, women are still more likely than men to be employed in lower-paying service and support professions.

Some studies, however, point to evidence that the gender wage gap persists even after variables like family leave are taken into account, concluding that systemic discrimination remains a primary factor. This is especially notable for women of color, whose average pay is significantly less than white male counterparts. For every dollar that the average white man made in 2014, the average African-American woman made only 60.5 cents, and the average Latina made only 54.6 cents, according NWLC.

By profession

Even within the same professions, women today are still paid significantly less, on average, than men. But the pay gap varies dramatically by job, according to NPR’s Planet Money team, which analyzed at Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2012. The chart below, by Lam Thuy Vo, shows jobs where the wage gap is smallest and largest (based on comparisons of full-time workers). Part of the gap in pay, Vo notes, results from professional decisions some women voluntarily make. She writes: “Among physicians, for example, women are more likely than men to choose lower-paid specialties (though this does not explain all of the pay gap among doctors).” It’s also interesting to note, writes Vo, that the jobs where the gap is biggest are the one’s that pay more.

Percentages are based on the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. Not all jobs have enough workers for BLS to calculate a meaningful ratio.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsCredit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/04/04/how-big-is-the-wage-gap-between-women-and-men/feed/112443Wage_Gapjobs-by–gender-616Percentages are based on the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. Not all jobs have enough workers for BLS to calculate a meaningful ratio.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPRMAP: How Many Refugees Did The U.S. Let In Last Year?https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/02/04/who-are-the-refugees-living-in-america-today/
https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2017/02/04/who-are-the-refugees-living-in-america-today/#commentsSat, 04 Feb 2017 08:05:12 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=25446Continue reading MAP: How Many Refugees Did The U.S. Let In Last Year?→]]>

Talk about a whirlwind.

To begin, a brief recap of the dramatic, confounding changes made to America’s immigration rules in the last week:

On Jan. 27 — Holocaust Remembrance Day to be precise — President Trump signed a sweeping executive order suspending the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days and cutting the maximum number of refugees allowed into the U.S. each year by more than half.

The order also blocked travel to the U.S. for at least 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim nations: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Iraq was subsequently removed from the list in March.

Although not technically a Muslim ban — as Trump proposed during his presidential campaign — the order does give priority to Christian refugees and other religious minorities from Muslim-majority nations. It also indefinitely bars all Syrian refugees, thousands of whom continue to flee their country’s bloody civil war.

Announced as a national security measure to protect the U.S. from terrorist threats, the president’s actions instantly unleashed a global outcry and fierce protests. It has also resulted in multiple lawsuits and scenes of chaos at airports around the world, where travelers have been detained and held in legal limbo. Within a week of the order, tens of thousands of visas had already been revoked.

But then this happened …

Washington State and Minnesota quickly filed suit, challenging the legality of Trump’s order. On Feb. 3, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the seven-nation ban, allowing travelers with valid visas to resume entering the country. The ruling was immediately appealed by the administration but quickly upheld by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a unanimous decision announced on Thursday, Feb. 9. The case will likely make its way to U.S. Supreme Court soon.

Per the court’s ruling, the United States will, for now, resume admitting new refugees, but many fewer than before. Under President Obama it was on pace to resettle 110,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 (October 2016 – September 2017). Trump’s recent actions, however, reduce the yearly refugee cap to 50,000, a part of the executive order the judge kept intact.

Andy Warner

Because nearly 33,000 refugees have already been accepted since the beginning of FY 2017, only about 17,000 more refugees can now be resettled over the next eight months, a dramatic slowdown in the once abundant flow of refugees entering the country.

Perceived threat

Despite Trump’s insistence on the need for “extreme vetting” of immigrants, the United States has one of the world’s most intensive refugee admissions procedures. The process can takes at least 18 months, and includes a thorough review by numerous federal agencies, background checks, in-person interviews, health screenings and, for some refugees, cultural orientations.

And although the purported rationale of suspending the refugee program is to prevent potential terrorists from entering the country and harming Americans, there have been strikingly few refugee-related incidents in the U.S. In fact, of the more than 800,000 refugees resettled since 9/11, only three have been arrested on terrorism-related charges. And no refugee has committed murder on U.S. soil in a terrorist act.

Terrorism fears, however, were heightened last September and November, when two Somali men injured multiple people in separate attacks in Minnesota and Ohio. Both men had come to America as child refugees, but had since lived here for years.

Where recent refugees came from

The U.S. admitted 84,995 refugees in the 2016 fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2015 – Sept. 30, 2016), according to data from the U.S. State Department’s Refugee Processing Center, the largest number of admissions since 1999.

Nearly half of all refugees in FY 2016 came from just three countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and Burma (Myanmar). The largest number of refugees over the last decade have come from Burma (159,692) and Iraq (135,643).

Of the refugees admitted in FY 2016, nearly 39,000 — or roughly 45 percent — were Muslim, the highest number of record.

Where they were resettled

More than half of recent refugees were resettled in just 10 states, with California, Texas and New York taking in nearly a quarter in FY 2016. Interestingly, though, the three states with the highest resettlement rates per capita were the Republican-strongholds of Nebraska, North Dakota and Idaho. For more on the resettlement process, this article from KPCC explains how it works.

Public opinion

Accepting large numbers of refugees has never been a particularly popular option among the U.S. public. In a Pew Research poll, 54 percent of registered voters — and 87 percent of Trump supporters — said the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees from Syria. As Pew notes, “U.S. public opinion polls from previous decades show Americans have largely opposed admitting large numbers of refugees from countries where people are fleeing war and oppression.”

UPDATED Jan. 27: The University of California on Thursday approved a nearly 3 percent tuition hike for all 10 campuses, the first increase since 2011.

The UC Board of Regents voted to raise annual tuition for the 2017-2018 school year by $282, and slap on about $50 in additional fees. It says the move is needed to pay for more faculty and course offerings to accommodate record high enrollment numbers and a drop in state funding.

That means the cost of tuition and fees and will go up from its current rate of roughly $13,500 to about $13,890 next year.

Consider this:

A recent college graduate working full time will now make, on average, about $17,500 more per year than someone with only a high school diploma, a difference of roughly $700,000 over a 40-year career.

That’s according to a 2014 Pew Research Center analysis. For young people today, it found, the pay gap between those with and without a college degree is much larger than it’s ever been before.

In other words, the cost of NOT going to college has skyrocketed in recent decades. As the once plentiful supply of American manufacturing jobs continues to shrink, a college degree has become increasingly necessary for scoring any kind of reasonably well-paid job.

Today, total U.S. student loan debt tops $1.3 trillion, far outpacing total U.S. credit card debt, and more than four times what it was a decade ago. Roughly seven in 10 seniors (69 percent) graduating from public and nonprofit private colleges in 2014 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,950 per borrower, according to the nonpartisan Institute for College Access and Success.

This conundrum is particularly evident in California, which has some of the highest living costs in the nation and an economy in which high-skilled, educated workers are increasingly in demand.

As recently as three decades ago, California’s public university system — both University of California and California State University campuses — was a national model of extremely low-cost, high-quality education. In 1980, yearly tuition for California residents at UCs was about $2,680 (in 2016 dollars), and roughly $500 at CSUs.

That all changed amid California’s severe recession and budget crisis in the early 1990s, when the state began to drastically tighten its higher education budget.

Tuition and fees more than doubled from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Although costs then stabilized through the early 2000s, they then resumed their “dramatic and relentless upward climb,” according to the California Budget and Policy Center.

Today, UC tuition is about $12,300 annually, an increase of more than 350 percent since 1980, with graduating seniors who took out loans carrying an average debt of about $20,000 (about $16,000 for CSU graduates). That’s still less than the national average, but much higher than it’s ever been for graduates of California’s public universities.

What’s really changed is who pays for public higher education in California, explains Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. While the bill used to be primarily footed by the state (through taxpayers), now students and families are paying over half the cost.

Interestingly, the burden of rising costs has fallen hardest on higher-income students. For lower-income students, the impact of higher tuition has actually been softened by “relatively generous” aid programs such as the federal Pell Grants, Cal Grants and the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan (for UC students with family incomes under $80,000).

“What often gets lost is that a substantial share of students qualify for financial aid,” Johnson says, noting that California — compared with public universities elsewhere — still does a good job in enrolling eligible low-income students. “Essentially what we’ve gone from is low-cost low-tuition, low-fee program, to one that is medium to high cost but also high aid.”

Nevertheless, he adds, this leaves a large group of middle-income students who may not qualify for aid programs but still don’t have sufficient resources to pay for college, and end up graduating with a large amount of debt.

Additionally, tuition and fees are only a part of the total funding picture. As the map at right shows, the rapidly rising cost of room and board on many campuses is also a major factor in college affordability. This means that even many students with generous aid packages are still incurring large amounts of debt to pay food and housing costs.

Roughly 6.1 million voting-age American citizens who have been convicted of crimes are restricted from voting in next week’s presidential election because of felon disenfranchisement laws.

That’s about 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting-age population – 1 of every 40 adults – that can’t vote because of a current or previous felony conviction, according to recent analysis by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform group.

Most of this population is not currently incarcerated. In fact, convicted felons in prison and jail today represent less than 25 percent of the disenfranchised population, according to the report. The vast majority are out of prison and living back in their communities.

More than half of this total disenfranchised population lives in 12 mostly conservative states with the most stringent restrictions. In nine of these states, voting rights are routinely denied to convicted felons who have completed their post-sentence supervision (probation or parole).

In Florida, a major swing state, more than 10 percent of the voting age population is disenfranchised. Felon voting rights are only restored through a governor’s executive action or a court order. Similar rules apply in Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia.

This map shows state felon disenfranchisement rates and related voting restrictions. Note that for the most restrictive states, voting can only be reinstated through the governor’s pardon or a court order. Arizona and Nevada offer exceptions for first-time offenders convicted of less serious crimes. And in Wyoming, rights are restored for non-violent felon upon completion of their sentences. A complete description of current rules is listed here.

The United States has among the world’s most restrictive felon disenfranchisement laws.

These state prohibitions disproportionately affect African-Americans, particularly black men: one of every 13 African-Americans of voting age — more than 7 percent nationally — is disenfranchised, according to Sentencing Project’s analysis. In some of the strictest states, more than 20 percent of the African American population is disenfranchised, the report found.

Conversely, Maine and Vermont, both overwhelmingly white, are the only two states without any felon voting restrictions; even inmates can vote.

“Fundamentally it’s a question of democracy and how we define who can participate,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. “When people are convicted of felonies, they should receive the appropriate punishment, but we don’t normally take away their fundamental rights of citizenship.”

Convicted felons, he notes, even those who are still incarcerated, retain many of their individual rights, including the ability to get married and divorced and to buy and sell property. The First Amendment right to free speech is also mostly preserved for felons (an inmate can write a letter-to-the-editor, for instance), with limitations generally only having to do with to security-related concerns.

Supporters of felon disenfranchisement laws defend their constitutionality and argue that it’s ultimately for individual states to determine. Some insist that committing a serious crime indicates a strong lack of moral character and trustworthiness, which they say is ample justification for denying the right to vote.

Despite the growth of the disenfranchised population, several states have started to re-examine their policies.

Mostly recently, the Maryland legislature moved to automatically restore voting rights to felons after their release from prison. The change, which went into effect in March, impacts an estimated 40,000 people who will be able to participate in the upcoming national election.

In April, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, issued an executive order restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who had completed their sentences. The move, however, was struck down in July by the state Supreme Court, which ruled that the governor had overstepped his authority by restoring rights all at once rather than on a case by case basis. In response, McAuliffe announced that his administration would individually process applications for 13,000 felons so could have the opportunity to vote in November.

War and persecution have forced a record number of people worldwide to flee their homes, according to a June 2016 report from the United Nations Refugee Agency.

The rapid increase in recent years has reached crisis levels, largely fueled by the ongoing war in Syria, the world’s single-largest driver of displacement.

By the end of 2015, there were 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, or more than one in every 113 people worldwide, according to the report. Surpassing even post-World War II numbers, it’s a 10 percent increase from 2014, and nearly double what it was 20 years ago. There were an estimated 12.4 million newly displaced people in 2015 alone.

This population included about 21.3 million refugees, 3.2 million asylum-seekers and 40.8 million people were internally displaced (within their own country).

Of the 21.3 million refugees in 2015, 51 percent of them were children. The majority of refugees were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.

“Refugee” is an internationally recognized classification for those forced to flee their countries because of armed conflict or persecution. As laid out by the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees are considered in a distinct category from migrants. The majority of them are eligible for protection and assistance from the UN and, to a varying degree, its member states (although each nation has distinct ways of admitting and serving refugee populations).

The Refugee Project, featured below, is an interactive mapping and storytelling platform that illustrates refugee migrations around the world every year since 1975. Created by design firm Hyperakt and artist Ekene Ijeoma, the project uses UN data through 2015 and only includes registered refugees under UN protection (not the millions of other displaced people and economic migrants around the world). Circles around each country expand and contract as the flow of refugees grows or slows, and a heatmap at the bottom shows the change in population over time. Radiating lines point to where refugees have found asylum. The map also includes short histories of major refugee crises over the past four decades.

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/09/15/mapping-refugees-worldwide-since-1975/feed/118542MAP: How the Feds Are Policing the Police in Baltimore and Other Cities Across the Countryhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/08/12/map-how-the-feds-are-policing-the-police-in-baltimore-and-other-departments-around-the-country/
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 20:03:30 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=23048Continue reading MAP: How the Feds Are Policing the Police in Baltimore and Other Cities Across the Country→]]>

The Baltimore Police Department has a long track record of racial discrimination, frequently violating the rights of the city’s black residents, according to a scathing report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The investigation was commissioned in May 2015, following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was severely injured during a rough ride in the back of a police van. The incident sparked days of protests and rioting in Baltimore, and led to criminal charges against six officers – three of whom have already been acquitted.

In examining the BPD’s policing practices from 2010 to 2015, the DOJ found “large racial disparities.” African-Americans make up 63 percent of Baltimore’s population, but were charged with 91 percent of all “discretionary offenses” (very minor, non-violent infractions) and 82 percent of all traffic stops, according to the report. Nearly half of all pedestrian stops occurred in just two primarily black districts. The report also found that police frequently used excessive force during these stops and unnecessarily escalated encounters.

“BPD’s targeted policing of certain Baltimore neighborhoods with minimal oversight or accountability disproportionately harms African-American residents,” reads the DOJ’s report. “Racially disparate impact is present at every stage of BPD’s enforcement actions, from the initial decision to stop individuals on Baltimore streets to searches, arrests, and uses of force.”

Although they make up only a tiny percentage of the the roughly 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies around the country, some of the departments investigated are among the nation’s largest, serving nearly one in five Americans, according to one analysis.

DOJ investigations of police forces, from Detroit to the U.S. Virgin Islands, are the outcome of a federal law prompted by a 1991 incident involving Rodney King, an unarmed black man savagely beaten by Los Angeles police officers during a traffic stop.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, enacted three years later, includes a provision — Section 14141 — that gives the DOJ authority to investigate systemic civil rights abuses. It’s one of the few federal tools that can compel widespread change in local law enforcement agencies, empowering the DOJ to take legal action against a police department unless it enters into a negotiated settlement — such as a consent decree or memorandum of agreement — and makes proposed reforms under a specified timeline.

There have been 67 formal investigations opened under Section 14141 to date. Of those, 22 cases have been closed without an agreement, 33 cases resulted in a negotiated settlement, and 12 cases are ongoing, including four currently in litigation.

The tactic has its naysayers: some critics call it a blatant form of government overreach that places unrealistic expectations and financial burdens on already cash-strapped local police departments. Some also question its effectiveness, pointing to instances where the DOJ’s mandates were ignored or where reform efforts stalled after federal oversight ended, as in the case of Cleveland’s department, which has undergone two DOJ investigations.

Supporters of the DOJ probes, though, point to the numerous examples of success that have led to sustained reforms and significantly improved police-community relations.

“it’s really hard to judge how effective the monitors are in bringing about reforms,” notes Stephen Rushin, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law. “There’s no single police misconduct measure. But it really looks like [there’s been] significant progress in cities that have these monitors.”

]]>2304814141-graphic_full_updated2-1MAP: Why Black Women Outnumber Black Men in the Bay Area and Beyondhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/07/06/why-black-women-significantly-outnumber-black-men-in-the-bay-area/
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 12:00:55 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=20819Continue reading MAP: Why Black Women Outnumber Black Men in the Bay Area and Beyond→]]>For every 100 black women living in the Bay Area, there are only 88 black men, according to a KQED Lowdown analysis.

This gender imbalance is notably greater than in any other racial group, and reflects the disproportionately high rate of incarceration among black males.

African-Americans made up about 7 percent of the San Francisco Bay Area’s total population, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Yet they accounted for almost 40 percent of people from the Bay Area in prison. The majority of this prison population is male.

The Lowdown borrowed a methodology used by the New York Times in its April 2015 analysis of “missing black men” nationwide. Across the country, the gender imbalance in the black community is actually higher than it is in the Bay Area: the Times calculated 83 black men for every 100 black women (our analysis found 82 per 100) — or approximately 1.5 million black men “missing” from daily life.

In the Bay Area, about 12,500 – or 12 percent — of primarily working-age black men (ages 25 to 54) are, in a sense, “missing” from daily life. In other words, these men, who under different circumstances would be a part of their local communities, are not present. The black gender imbalance is greatest in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The gender imbalance among blacks throughout California resembles that in the Bay Area, for what appear to be similar reasons. Statewide, there are 89 black men for every 100 black women, according to our analysis. That amounts to roughly 53,000 more black women than black men living in California households. The imbalance is greatest in Los Angeles County.

While African-Americans make up about 6 percent of California’s total population, they make up nearly 30 percent of the state’s prison population.

The maps below show Bay Area and regional Los Angeles communities with the greatest gender imbalances among black residents. The imbalance of men to women is shown in absolute numbers and divided by designated U.S. Census tracts (a statistical subdivision of a county used for population counts). Only tracts with more than 200 black adults and a deficit of more than 50 black men are shown.

Our analysis assumes a roughly even male-to-female birthrate for every race and shows the number of “prime-age” adults between 25 and 54 years old living in households, as reported in the 2010 Census.

Tracts shaded in red have the largest gender disparities. Note that the geographically large Bay Area census tract 356002 includes parts of Richmond, Martinez and Hercules.

LISTEN: Two related KQED radio stories

“The economic impact of this is huge,” said Brian Goldstein, Director of Policy and Development at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ), a San Francisco-based criminal justice advocacy group. Not only are large numbers of black men removed from the workforce, Goldstein said, those released from jail or prison often find their earning potential significantly diminished.

Goldstein also points out that there are many hidden costs associated with such a big gender imbalance, including family instability and the loss of civic engagement.

“The collateral consequences,” he added, “extend far beyond the individuals who are incarcerated.”

Additional factors

Higher mortality rates resulting from accidents, heart disease and, most notably, homicide also appear to affect the gender imbalance in black communities both in the Bay Area and statewide. Although the number of black homicide victims in California has fallen sharply over the last decade – from 758 in 2005 to 510 in 2014 – the rate remains disproportionately high: more than 30 percent of all homicide victims in the state are black. And almost 90 percent of these victims are men.

Demographers also point to a historical under-counting of black men in the national census, as well as high rates of black male military deployment and those living in other “non-institutional facilities” such as mental hospitals or homeless shelters.

These factors, however, pale in comparison to the impact of mass incarceration on the overall gender imbalance in the black community, both locally and statewide.

]]>20819statewidehadkjfhkjashkjmen per womenshare of prison popMAP: Every “Mass Shooting” in America So Far This Yearhttps://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/06/12/map-every-recorded-mass-shooting-in-america-this-year-so-far-2/
Sun, 12 Jun 2016 19:08:28 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/?p=22437Continue reading MAP: Every “Mass Shooting” in America So Far This Year→]]>Correction: This article originally and incorrectly stated that the FBI defines a “mass shooting” as a single incident in which four or more people, including the gunman, are killed or injured by gunfire. Rather, this is the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that verifies and compiles crowd-sourced incidents of gun violence in the United States, and whose data we use in the map below.

A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. early Sunday morning, killing at least 49 people before dying in a gunfight with police. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

This is the 133rd shooting of 2016 in which four or more people, including the gunman, have been killed or injured by gunfire during a single instance, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which categorizes such incidents as a “mass shootings.”

Of the 133 incidents in 2016 listed on the GVA site, 11 resulted in the deaths of four or more people (including the gunman), 10 resulted in the deaths of three people and 14 resulted in the deaths of two people.

In fact, there has never been one officially accepted definition of a “mass shooting.” And as the Washington Post notes: “The government has never even defined ‘mass shooting’ as a stand-alone category.”

Critics say the Gun Violence Archive’s definition is too lenient. They argue including injuries in the definition of a “mass shooting” artificially inflating the number of incidents, sending a message to the public that is both misleading and alarmist.

Editor’s note: The data in the map below is current as of June 20. However, figures will likely increase as certain precincts continue to count mail-in ballots. The map will be updated accordingly. See the Secretary of State’s updated tally of uncounted ballots by county.

Bringing up the rear in this exhaustive presidential primary contest, the Golden State on Tuesday finally got its moment to shine.

Sort of.

Among the last six states to vote, California handed Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton a resounding victory over her opponent Bernie Sanders. (Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, won too, but that came as little surprise given his lack of competition.)

Clinton’s win in this state, which offered the biggest delegate payout, solidified her position as the presumptive Democratic nominee. It marks the first time in history that a major U.S. political party has chosen a woman as its standard bearer.

Nonetheless, voter turnout in California was pointedly low, as it often is during primary elections, although the rate has crept up in the days since the primary, as more last-minute and provisional ballots have been counted. As of June 20, ballots were cast by about 43 percent of registered voters, according to the Secretary of State. That count will likely increase slightly, as more mail-in ballots are verfied and counted.

Of course, the announcement by the Associated Press the day before the primary, that Clinton had effectively clinched the nomination, wasn’t exactly a motivating factor for the tepid voter.

“According to Political Data’s analysis of about 3.1 million ballots returned to county registrars before Tuesday’s vote, voters under 35 made up just 10 percent of those who voted. That group makes up 25 percent of the state’s 17.9 million registered voters. In contrast, 68 percent of ballots returned came from voters over 55, who make up 41 percent of registered voters.”

Additionally, voter participation was low in many of California’s more populous counties, including Los Angeles (29.3 percent) and Alameda (30.5 percent).

The map below shows which counties supported Clinton and which favored Sanders. Note the northern-sourthern divide. The bottom map shows the results of every state contest in this oh-so-long 2016 primary season.